What We Find in the Dark

Do you ever feel like giving up on unanswered prayers? Aubrey Sampson offers a reason we should keep knocking.

Elisa

What We Find in the Dark

By Aubrey Sampson

In Luke 11, Jesus tells a story about someone banging on his friend’s door at midnight, asking for some loaves of bread. Until this year, I don’t think I would have noticed the midnight setting of Jesus’ teaching.

Jesus starts this story by saying, essentially, “Look, your friend is obviously going to get annoyed because it’s midnight, and his kids are already asleep. He’s in his pajamas and robe, streaming his favorite show, just trying to relax with the little bit of alone time he finally has. He doesn’t want to have to get up off the couch and go unlock the door. He’d also have to search the pantry to even find the bread.” It seems like Jesus is about to share the man’s response as “Sorry, not sorry ... no bread for you.”

But then Jesus surprises his audience with a twist ending, “Even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need” (Luke 11:8, emphasis added).

Because of your annoying persistence, your friend will get out of bed or shove off the couch and shuffle over to the bread cupboard. He’ll get you all the loaves you’re asking for. 

Jesus tells us to pray with tireless tenacity. He tells us to seek, so that we will know his abundant provisions, rather than fall prey to believing our unmet longings and unanswered prayers are a sign of him not meeting our needs. It can be so easy in the dark night to look at the way life isn’t going, and assume that means God’s isn’t working, providing, or answering prayers. A counter-liturgy to that? Keep asking anyway. Ask expectantly.

Jesus also positions this parable on persistent prayer within something profound: relationship. You can ask of God audaciously because you possess a truly audacious thing—friendship with God. But the bewildering thing is what Jesus says about that relationship, “It’s not the friendship. That’s not why he will give you what you’re asking for; it’s your impudence.”

When the night is dark, Jesus seems to be saying:

Keep knocking.

Make your faith a verb.

Don’t give up.

Don’t lose your mettle.

Continue asking for what you need.

There is a line to tow here, of course, lest we begin to think it’s on us to say special magic words or perform the perfect dog and pony show to convince God to release some proverbial dangling carrot. Shameless audacity is not the same as striving, earning, or laboring for God’s grace. It’s a posture of the heart, not a proving of oneself. This story of prayer falls just after Jesus taught us to pray for daily bread, God’s will to be done, and God’s Kingdom come. And though Jesus is certainly encouraging our fearlessness, teaching us to ask God for these things with boldness and bravado, it’s ultimately God’s grace, God’s provision, and God’s Kingdom at work.

When the night is so gloomy you can’t see the way forward, even then, dare to have the nerve to walk over to God’s house and make some demands. When your eyes are red and bleary and your knuckles are bloody from the tireless knocking and you’re convinced God’s either not home or possibly ignoring you, even then, keep pounding on God’s door.

When dreams die, when our loved ones say good-bye, the dark night gets darker and longer than we are prepared for. There will be so many times we want to give up, to armor ourselves with the belief that if we don’t ask, we won’t be let down again.

No matter how long your night lasts, or how dim it becomes, Jesus invites you to contend for your faith, to fight courageously when you’d rather fade away.

And somehow, eventually, along the way, loss starts to feel less like an intruder. I won’t go so far as to call loss a friend. But if you don’t give up in your darkest hours, if you persist in knocking, in seeking, in asking, in showing up, you find that God puts on his slippers, shuffles to the door, and greets you with warm bread and a side of honey to sustain you until morning.

Adapted from What We Find in the Dark: Loss, Hope, and God’s Presence in Grief by Aubrey Sampson. Copyright © 2024. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, a Division of Tyndale House Ministries. 

Aubrey Sampson (MA, evangelism and leadership) coplanted and serves as a teaching pastor at Renewal Church, a multiethnic congregation in Chicagoland. She also speaks regularly at churches and conferences around the country. She is an award-nominated author, a coach with Propel Women Cohorts, and the cohost of The Nothing Is Wasted Podcast. Aubrey is the author of several books, most recently Big Feelings Days: A Book about Hard Things, Heavy Emotions, and Jesus’ Love (October 2023). Her most recent title, What We Find in the Dark will release from NavPress in April 2025. She is passionate about helping hurting Christians find God’s presence in their pain. She and her husband, Kevin, and their three hilarious sons live, minister, and play in the Chicagoland area. You can connect with Aubrey on her website, aubreysampson.com, and on social media @aubsamp.